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A company called Constellation 3D is working on fluorescent multi-layer disk (FMD) technology. This will allow the production of DVD-sized discs that can store up to 100Gb and credit card-sized 10Gb drives - which could easily handle the growing multimedia content available for mobile devices.

Lev Zaidenberg, C3D's director of business development, predicted FMD technology would revolutionise data storage within five years, replacing CDs and DVDs.

The technology works using layers. Vladimir Schwarz, chief technology officer for C3D explained that while DVD works on only two layers employing a single laser beam, FMD will work on up to 20 layers, reading them with a diffused beam. The technology is similar to DVD, so FMD players should be backwards compatible. Methods of exchanging data between the layers mean that read and write times should significantly decrease, too.